


Sore Loser

by gwendee



Category: Assassination Classroom
Genre: Crossdressing, Cultural Festival (Japan), High School, M/M, Making Stupid Bets, Post-Canon, Pre-Relationship, That Seems To Be A Common Trope In My Fics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-05-20 14:01:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19378171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwendee/pseuds/gwendee
Summary: "Seriously?" Akabane says, exasperated. “Why did you even choose to wear a corset?”“Because it matches my skirt,” Gakushuu says plainly. He hikes the frilly fabric up his knees so he can adjust the garter belt, wriggles to make sure everything is in place, then does a fanciful little twirl and gives Akabane an innocent smile. "Don't I look pretty?"





	Sore Loser

**Frills and Thrills**

Gakushuu's a sore loser, he'd admit that much. He doesn't take defeat as gracefully as he hopes and it's from sheer willpower that he does not tear the result slip in his hands, merely flattening out the slight crease against his desk and putting it into his folder, which he does not send flying at Akabane's ugly face to shut him up.

Amidst the cacophony of Akabane's gloating and the leering crowd, Ren manages to shoot Gakushuu an apologetic look. His file goes into his bag before it leaves his hands as a projectile, and the bag goes to the floor before it swings wide arc to collide against Akabane's cheek. 

"What's your request?" Gakushuu says through a thin-lipped smile and not a grit of teeth, and Akabane shows all of his with a shark-like grin. A bet was a bet, witnesses were witnesses; a tantrum was beneath him and surely Akabane would be reasonable if he were to wish to walk out of Kunugigaoka alive today. His classmates were congratulating Akabane with pats on the back off the high of his victory but Gakushuu knows their favor truly lies with him, and even Gakushuu knows that a public wager such as this had their limits as determined by a jury-

"You have to dress like a girl for the whole of the cultural festival."

Afterwards, when Gakushuu has sprinted thrice around the massive school campus hot on Akabane's heels, he thinks: Akabane's request was mischievous and slightly naughty but there were many loopholes, there were no specifications on what a girl should dress like and Akabane had given no other condition aside from that he looked feminine, but there were many ways around it that didn't require crossdressing to that large of an extent. 

However, that in itself was a problem, Akabane had phrased his demand so vaguely that the students have deemed it acceptable: had he requested Gakushuu to don any specific article of clothing, he could have been labelled a pervert or anything of that nature. Leaving the interpretation of "like a girl" up to Gakushuu, however, put the pressure entirely on him so as how to go about treading the sensitivities of stereotypes. 

Social constructs aside, it also left it up to Gakushuu so as to demonstrate how much of a sore loser he could be. Gakushuu could throw on stray pieces of jewelry and eyeliner and it would, on a technical basis, fulfill his end of the deal, but would affect his image as to how he handled defeat by cutting corners and half-assing his end of an agreement that was no doubt by now a hot topic in schoolwide gossip.

Fucking Akabane.

Ai was a demure slip of a girl that many overlooked, but Gakushuu was oddly fond over. She was quite a cute little junior when he'd first met her and she'd clutched her notebook so hard that her knuckles turned white when Gakushuu had approached her two days after deliberating his course of action on how to carry out Akabane's demands. 

"It was my loss," Gakushuu lies, when she snapped about boundaries and respect or lack thereof in reference to unreasonable demands, "I went into the bet knowing Akabane and his whims." 

"Why me?" Ai squeaked.

"Everyone else would talk and I would like to keep it under wraps for the big reveal," Gakushuu says, "you have an eye for fashion, and I trust you."

The plan was set in motion. Why barely graze over the requirements of their bet if it was something expected of him to do? Gakushuu was a patriarch of malicious compliance. Ren had been skeptical but sighed and swiped his card on Gakushuu's one-time purchases, and despite her initial rebuff Ai seemed rather giddy with the opportunities presented to her by a measuring tape and a limitless budget. Kunugigaoka's annual cultural festival was the flashiest event in their district and with rumors hopping about Gakushuu was going to attract attention either ways, and he was going to own it. 

Ridiculous? Over-the-top? Most definitely. But Gakushuu refused to be labelled a bad sport and everything was all about perception and the way he carried himself; If he was ashamed, then it would be shameful. He says that much to Ai and Ren, who were deliberating over the curls of the large ribbon resting on Gakushuu’s lower back, and Ren had remarked that Gakushuu had always worn confidence like a gold cloak.

2-A had a booth in the cultural festival selling keychains, as opposed to the grandiose of the year prior where Gakushuu had gotten them a stage and the theatrical rivalry between him and Akabane over a microphone had shot their profits through the roof. Akabane hadn't had too bad a singing voice and they harmonized rather well, but taking center stage every year was exhausting and it was far more magnanimous in his image to allow for more people to share the spotlight. The keychains this year were well done, and quality was up to par.

Ren had snorted at those words. "You plan to be in the limelight again." 

"The principle is different," Gakushuu had sniffed.

He'd gone for flashy instead of inconspicuous and Gakushuu would admit he makes a stunning woman, and Ren doesn't meet his eyes the whole time he's trying to tighten Gakushuu's corset. He's leaner than most other guys which Gakushuu attributes to his genetics, his father had such a slender frame and his mother was equally as petite, which made more convenient for his endeavor. 

"Cute," Ai says, "you sure you don't want to wear the wig?"

"That will make me unrecognizable," Gakushuu points out, "I wish to go around looking like myself."

He'd gotten a rather ostentatious cosplay outfit reminiscent of a magical girl outfit which Gakushuu had dimmed down removing ribbons and rhinestones, but the end product is still an eye-catching display of frills and ruffles, in a scarlet and black that Gakushuu thought looked rather sultry. "You look like a stripper," Ren had blurted, and Ai had thrown a needle-free pincushion at his head.  

Not quite the look Gakushuu was going for, but Ren had stayed the same scarlet as the accents of his skirt for minutes and rendering Ren speechless was an easy but motivating task that got Gakushuu oddly geared up for the real thing. Ai, armed with a makeup kit and bouncing on her toes, dusts blush over Gakushuu's cheeks and draws an even line of eyeliner.

"Did you give me cat wings?" Gakushuu says. 

Ai was a pleasant shade of pink. "You're actually so pretty, senpai, they really bring out your eyes."

"Do they," Gakushuu preens. Ren had long since passed out on a nearby desk. 2-A had frantically emptied out their classroom to use as a makeshift dressing room early in gleeful anticipation on seeing whether Gakushuu would hold out on his end of the bet, booth set up and ready to go in the courtyard. There's a knock on the door and Araki says on the other side, "you okay, Asano?"

"Don't rush a lady," Gakushuu says. Ai giggles. 

He'd let his bangs grow out for this moment, even if it had been to endure two weeks of using hairclips to keep them out of his eyes, which drew odd looks from his father who deigned to say nothing. A wig would have been far easier and Gakushuu doesn't quite comprehend the soberity of his own reasoning at that point and it was a waste of his efforts now if he chopped it off. He lets Ai mess around with his hair and she twists a pin behind his ear.

Araki, true to prediction, flails and blubbers on for two minutes before succumbing to his shock and falling silent. Gakushuu is oddly proud. He's escorted by Ai and Araki down empty corridors as sounds from the courtyard and concourse grow louder with bustling preparation, and stepping into the mess of people on their own missions means he blends into the crowd.

Or he would have, if he hadn't chosen what Ren vehemently calls "black widow colors" and if he wasn't Asano Gakushuu wearing a cosplay magical girl dress.

Someone screams. 

Gakushuu is elated. He think he'd be far more miserable slumming it out but the attention he gets is more interesting than anything, with red faced stammers and nervous selfies. No publicity is bad publicity, or the saying goes. He feels like a celebrity, far different from the pedestal he sets for himself as a school leader who people approach with a weary caution, and today it's sobering.

That, and this is an entirely new aspect of emotional manipulation Gakushuu has never considered, and it's turning heads. He's a little high on the thought of it. "How many people do you think are questioning their sexuality right now?"

Ren buries his hands in his pockets. "A lot," he says miserably.

"Even you?" Gakushuu hums.

"I plead the fifth," Ren says. 

It takes a while to make his way through the crowd and word travels faster than Gakushuu does in heels, so the 2-A booth is buzzing with anticipation by the time Gakushuu appears, and half his class screams at once. They explode into a flurry of questions, and then one clear "what the fuck" pierces through like a bad note, and Gakushuu turns to face Akabane, who's staring slack jawed.

Gakushuu grins at him. He does a little spin and kicks up the fluff of his skirt and says, "what do you think?" And winks.

Red the same shade as his hair blooms on his cheeks. "W-what?" Akabane says.

"The bet," Gakushuu clarifies, "do you think I've fulfilled your conditions?"

Akabane doesn’t say anything. He shoves his hands in the pockets of his signature blazer and glares down at the ground in front of Gakushuu’s feet, face flushed and fringe falling in front of his eyes. It’s similar to the expression Ren was sporting a few feet away and Gakushuu is no stranger to attention of that nature, and he delights to see that Akabane was mad at himself for being flustered. 

"Are you going to wear that throughout the whole day?” A classmate asks, “when the public arrives?”

“Made a bet, didn’t I?” Gakushuu says. His father, as far as he knew, was on the list of attendees and would no doubt seek him out at some point in time. He wonders what his reaction would be.

“You don’t have to,” Akabane says forcefully.

Gakushuu grins at him.

Classes who finished their set-ups early pay the 2-A booth a visit, if only to ogle at Gakushuu in a large frilly skirt. His classmates dissolve from amusement to irritation at the frankly unnecessary attention, and the third time someone tries to kick up Gakushuu’s skirt as a joke, a 2-A girl throws a pair of scissors at him. Human traffic by the 2-A booths means they’ve earned back their product cost from fellow schoolmates by the time the cultural festival officially commences.

“I’m think you should change back before it starts getting crowded,” Ren tells him. 

Gakushuu had previously wanted to stick through it. Now he just wanted some pants.  "Hey, Ren," Gakushuu says, "if you ever bother a girl again, I'm sticking a fork through your eyes."

"Okay," Ren agrees miserably.

Akabane’s blazer had long since migrated to cover Gakushuu’s shoulders, and the boy in question was sulking at the front of their stand as people give him and his menacing aura wide berth. Their classmate throws a keychain at him and tells him to take his brooding somewhere else.

“Take Asano with you,” their class president says, pausing to wave a pair of pliers in Gakushuu’s general direction, “please change back, for all our sanities.” She makes a face, and resumes kicking the shit out of the fifth person who tried to take a picture up Gakushuu’s skirt.

Gakushuu agrees. It started off fun, but it was exhausting now. People were surprisingly bold perverts. He’d rather they shy away from him at a respectable distance and put him on an unreachable scale than this… harassment, like his clothes suddenly mean he wasn’t the same person who terrified them on a daily basis. If there weren’t so many members of the general public here, he might have already sent two people to the hospital.

That, and it was impossible to beat the shit out of someone in this skirt, and the corset was killing him.

Akabane laughs. He looks a little weird without his blazer, Gakushuu had grown accustomed to the sight of black and red as a matching set. He tries not to think about his chosen color scheme.

“Nobody asked you to wear a corset,” Akabane says softly, flicking the lapels of the blazer draped over Gakushuu. “I thought you’d just wear one of the female uniforms.”

“Should have made it clear, then,” Gakushuu says. Luckily Akabane is intimidating enough for the both of them, and most people jump out of the way as they make their way back to the school building. Away from the crowd they fall in step, and Gakushuu hands the blazer back.

Akabane doesn’t take it. “Until you get changed,” he says.

“No one’s in the school building,” Gakushuu retorts, but wraps it around himself again. Maybe he shouldn’t have picked such a low cut? He was in now way endowed but his collarbones were prominent. 

“Not your fault assholes forget basic decency when they see something pretty,” Akabane says.

Ah, the bitterness of human nature. And, also, “you think I’m pretty?”

Akabane immediately picks up the pace, and Gakushuu doesn’t trip over his skirt a little when he tries to catch up, except that he does and sourly walks the rest of the trip barefoot with his heels in his hands without an escort. Standing by the 2-A lockers, Akabane immediately shoves Gakushuu into the empty classroom and bars the door between them. “Hurry up and get changed!” 

Gakushuu scowls. “You have to help me. I can’t undo the corset by myself.”

There’s a beat of silence so long that Gakushuu wonders if Akabane had abandoned him here with perhaps a table blocking the door and booked it. But then he says, “seriously?’

“Yes,” Gakushuu says. 

The door opens agonizingly slow, and Akabane peeks in. Sighs dejectedly, enters the classroom with a grimace of his face, and locks the door. “How do I do this?”

“I don’t know,” Gakushuu admits, “Ai and Ren were the ones working on it. Not that I can see, it’s behind my back.”

“Seriously?” Akabane repeats, more exasperated this time. “Why did you even choose to wear a corset?”

“Because it matches my skirt,” Gakushuu says plainly. He hikes the frilly fabric up his knees so he can adjust the garter belt, wriggles to make sure everything is in place, then does a fanciful little twirl and gives Akabane an innocent smile. "Don't I look pretty?"

Akabane turns even redder. “Why are you wearing  _ that _ ?” 

“To keep my stockings up,” Gakushuu says. He does him the favor of removing the giant ribbon hanging off the back of the skirt. Akabane’s hands are fleeting and nervous, dancing around Gakushuu’s back and tugging laces here and there but failing to release any tension.

“I don’t mind contact,” Gakushuu sighs, “you’re not offending my delicate sensibilities by keeping your hands on me for more than 5 seconds at a time.” 

Akabane doesn’t say anything. Maybe Gakushuu went a little too far with his teasing. For all he knew, Akabane wasn’t exactly straight, and maybe he felt like Gakushuu was being far too personal. Boundaries, and all.

And then Akabane’s hands are on his back again, and they’re still light but slow this time, and the laces come loose. Gakushuu lets out a sigh of relief when it’s wide enough to wriggle out of and he starts undoing the laces of his skirt. Akabane quickly turns around to face the whiteboard.

“Done,” Gakushuu says. He’s back in his male school uniform, and only then does Akabane turn back around to face him and take his blazer back. There’s still a light dusting of pink on his face. The walk back to the courtyard is mostly silent, but there was still one thing at the back of Gakushuu’s mind.

“Hey Akabane,” he says, “did you  _ really  _ think I was pretty?”

Akabane bolts.

Later, Gakuhou finds him and sobs a little about how someone came up to him and told him he had a beautiful daughter, and that 2-A looked a little teary eyed at his speech about supporting his son’s or daughter’s lifestyle choices whatever they may be, and then drops a hundred on little keychains. Gakushuu yells at him a little.

Much later, some sleazy figure propositions Gakushuu about the skirt, and much  _ much  _ later, after Gakushuu reminds everyone that he was still very much the same Asano that the general student population so feared and the cultural festival starts to die down, Akabane reappears from wherever the hell he ran off to and stands at attention in front of Gakushuu with an oddly intense expression.

“Yes,” Akabane says. Drops his gaze again.

“Yes?” Gakushuu raises an eyebrow, oh, oh! This was probably a moment of some sort, Gakushuu should reach out and bump their shoulders together and raise his head to allude to the setting sun to their right, or make a suggestion about walking around the dwindling activity, but instead he says, “is it a kink?”

Akabane bolts, again.

 

 

 

 

(Gakushuu’s not a sore loser. He is, but he’s not, and for the first time he’s absolutely delighted at finding someone who is more horrible at sportsmanship than he is, a truly remarkable feat. Akabane doesn’t rip the result slip in half, but it looks like it’s a near thing. But he doesn’t quite have to consider his standing in front of the school as much as Gakushuu does and thus has no qualms in publicly expressing his unwillingness. 

“We don’t even have to buy a new set of clothes because you’re about my size,” Gakushuu reasons.

“I thought you’d be the possessive kind, Asano,” someone comments, bravely undeterred by the glare Akabane sends their way, “remember what happened last time you wore that skirt?”

“I didn’t say I wanted him to wear it in public,” Gakushuu says. Winks. Laughs and dodges the bag that he would have swung had he had less self restraint one semester ago, sprints two and a half rounds around school campus, then gets tackled to the ground by his very pissed off boyfriend.

“Sore loser,” Gakushuu teases.

Akabane seethes.)

 


End file.
